An alliance of developers have already begun work on a new cryptocurrency, Decred. The new currency is based upon the same Bitcoin model that was previously used with all other cryptocurrencies. However, Decred is saving the main technical features of Bitcoin and fixing all of the issues that Bitcoin had.
While the only clear contributors to the project are community-based such as are Github users, it can be assumed that the developers have a large amount of experience with Bitcoin development, and may even be the original Bitcoin Core developers.
Decred will serve as a hybridized proof-of-work/proof-of-stake consensus system that allows users to create a balance between proof-of-work miners and proof-of-stake users to develop a much more robust consensus.
In the 18 months since the Silk Road online black market for narcotics was taken down by a swarm of three-letter agencies, a site known as Evolution has taken its place at the top of the dark web drug trade. Now Evolution, too, has suddenly dropped off the face of the internet. But unlike its Silk Road predecessor, there’s no indication that law enforcement took down the newer black market. Instead, it’s simply, mysteriously vanished—with rumors swirling that its own administrators may have run off with many millions of dollars of its users’ drug money.
Over the past weekend, the massive anonymous market known as Evolution halted withdrawals of bitcoin from its website, telling users that it was dealing with technical difficulties. Then on Tuesday evening, both its market and user forum went offline, with no opportunity for drug buyers and sellers to pull out the funds they had stored in their Evolution accounts. The result has been a wave of panic that’s shaken the online black market economy as much as any of the law enforcement drug busts of the last two years.
Late Tuesday, a Reddit user named NSWGreat who had earlier self-described as an Evolution drug dealer and “public relations” staffer —he or she had even hosted an “ask me anything” session about the job days earlier—wrote a post to Reddit’s darknet markets forum that claimed to confirm Evolution’s administrators had in fact shut down the site’s back end too, and escaped with users’ money; NSWGreat described confronting Evolution’s two pseudonymous owners, Verto and Kimble, who he or she says then admitted they were closing the market and stealing its funds. “I am so sorry, but Verto and Kimble have f–ked us all. I have over $20,000 in escrow myself from sales,” NSWGreat wrote. “I’m sorry for everyone’s loses, I’m gutted and speechless. I feel so betrayed.”
Bitcoin exchange MyCoin has closed its doors, potentially leaving up to 3,000 investors out of pocket.
The closure of the Bitcoin exchange was originally reported by the South China Morning Post on Monday. MyCoin, a supposed Hong Kong-based virtual currency trading exchange, has reportedly closed its doors leaving as many as 3,000 local investors with combined losses of HK$3 billion ($387 million).
Bitcoin exchanges are no stranger to closures and controversy. The most famous example is that of Mt. Gox, once one of the dominant Bitcoin exchanges online. Tokyo-based Mt. Gox closed its doors without warning in February last year, filing for bankruptcy and leaving investors approximately $500 million out of pocket. The closure of Mt. Gox was followed by others struck by cyberattack, including Flexcoin, Poloniex and Bitcurex.
However, MyCoin's case may be different. Approximately 30 MyCoin clients are filing reports with local police that MyCoin was less of a Bitcoin exchange and more like a pyramid-style Ponzi scheme.
MyCoin customers were promised up to HK$1 million as a return on their money in four months for buying a HK$400,000 Bitcoin contract. The contract, which was meant to produce 90 bitcoins on maturity, also encouraged clients to lure others to the fold with new customer recruitment rewards such as extra profit, prizes and cars.
No customer was given written proof of their investment, and in December, MyCoin changed its trading rules -- forbidding clients from withdrawing their virtual currency unless they recruited other customers.
Fraudulent schemes have scammed at least $11 million in Bitcoin deposits from unsuspecting cyber customers over the past four years, according to new cyber security research from Southern Methodist University, Dallas.
Bitcoin is the digital world's most popular virtual currency, with millions in circulation.
In the first empirical study of its kind, SMU researchers found that hucksters used four different types of schemes through authentic-looking web-based investment and banking outlets to lure customers and heist deposits, said computer security expert Marie Vasek, lead researcher on the study.
"Our calculation of $11 million is almost certainly at the low-end," said Vasek. "The amount of Bitcoin that depositors have lost to these scams is probably many millions more."
Typically the scams succeed by exploiting not only people's greed, but also the urge to "get rich quick," coupled with the inability to judge the legitimacy of web services to decide which financial sites are good or bad, said Bitcoin and cyber security expert Tyler W. Moore, co-researcher on the study.
"Because the complete history of Bitcoin transactions are made public, we have been able to inspect, for the first time, the money flowing in and out of fraudulent schemes in great detail. It's like having access to all of Bernie Madoff's books for many of these scams," said Moore, director of the Economics and Social Sciences program of the Darwin Deason Institute for Cyber Security in SMU's Bobby B. Lyle School of Engineering.
